Q. Wasn't Charles Dickens the first author to make $1...

NAMES AND FACES - INFORMED SOURCE

May 15, 1993|By L.M. Boyd

Q. Wasn't Charles Dickens the first author to make $1 million?

A. Not he. Credit Jack London with that. Dead at 40 in 1916 of an overdose. Dickens, too, became famous at an early age and made money. But he fell in love with his wife's sister, who died young, and some literary historians say he just endured the remaining 33 years of his life.

Lapland has no national boundaries.

Q. You said the inside of the sun is black. How do you know?

A. The sun's inside gets no light, according to scientists. The inside of whatever gets no light is black. Cobblestones. Glaciers. Our skulls.

Doubt isn't all bad, certainly. Bertrand Russell said, ''It's healthy now and then to hang a question mark on things you've long taken for granted.''

Client writes: ''The old military parachutes were rated for 100 jumps or so, but the new parachutes, if well kept, should be good for more than 1,000 jumps.''

Texans never could spell any too well, according to one of same. Take Galveston. It started out as Galvezton. In honor of Spain's Count Bernardo de Galvez, the viceroy of Mexico with a history of fighting the British.

There's a medical name for the condition of feet that smell more than a little bit bad: bromidrosis.